Effect of SynonymFilter on Solr document fields

[Prasanna Ranganathan <pr...@netflix.com>]

Hi,

 I am a newbie to Solr and request you all to kindly excuse any rookie
mistakes.

 I have the following questions:

We use the Synonym Filter on one of the indexed fields. It is specified in
the schema.xml as one of the filters (for the analyzer type index) for that
field. I believe that this means any tokens which match an entry in the
provided synonym file will have all the forms indexed provided
expanded=true. I am able to verify that by using the Solr admin analysis
tool. However when I use Luke to examine a document in the index which would
have synonyms for that particular field, I see only the original value and
do not see the additional forms that should be added due to the synonym
match for the field in question. I am not sure if I am missing something
here. How do I verify the same?

Another related question ­ The field in question here is not specified as
multivalued. However, as I understand it a synonym match will mean multiple
values for that field. I was not able to find any documentation that
explains this in detail and would like to know how this particular case
impacts the indexing of that field, scoring, etc. How does the behavior of a
field having multiple values due to SynonymFilter compare and contrast with
the multivalued=true|false flag. What would a synonym match expansion for a
field with multivalued=false mean?

Prasanna.